Martin Campbell can lay claim to reinventing James Bond not once but twice, with GoldenEye and Casino Royale. But even he initially blanched at the challenge of bringing comic-book superhero The Green Lantern to the screen. "It's daunting," he tells Empire. "Just the process, something like 1,300 visual effects shots, is mind-blowing, quite honestly."
The reason for this mountain of FX? Well, it's something to do with the Lantern's power source, a mystical ring. "It's energised by a battery on the planet of Oa, which taps into the willpower of everyone in the universe," explains Campbell, "From that ring you can form constructs. So if you got into a fight, you could form a giant fist. Or a fighter plane."
Sounds cool - and expensive. Which is partly why Warner Bros. has made a late change to the shooting location. Instead of filming in Australia as planned, Campbell and star Ryan Reynolds will now begin in New Orleans in April. "It's a very interesting city," enthuses the director, "with a damn good tax rate!"
All those dollars will be goin straight onto the screen, then, to create a scope beyond anything you've seen before. "He's the only superhero to my knowledge who regularly goes to another planet," Campbell says, "Superman and Batman were essentially locked into a particularly city. The Lantern isn't so Earthbound."
The Green Lantern is out in 2011.
